在这个竞选季中，是否支持数据中心的建设成为一个具有决定性意义的问题，这一议题已经引发了众多美洲原住民部落的激烈争论。许多参选的美洲原住民领袖——包括新墨西哥州州长候选人Deb Haaland、堪萨斯州众议院议员候选人Sharice Davids、阿拉斯加州参议院议员候选人Mary Peltola以及明尼苏达州参议院议员候选人Peggy Flanagan——都不得不直接面对这一议题。
Whether to support data center development is a defining issue in this campaign season, and it is a debate that has taken over many Native American tribes. And on this issue, many Native leaders on the ballot—including Deb Haaland running for governor of New Mexico, Sharice Davids running for the House of Representatives from Kansas, Mary Peltola running for the U.S. Senate from Alaska, and Peggy Flanagan in a race for U.S. Senate in Minnesota—are being forced to address the issue head-on.
Flanagan上个月赢得了民主党、农民联盟及劳工组织的联合参议院初选。她的奥吉布韦族名字“Gizhiiwewidamookwe”意为“一个能够用清晰响亮的声音表达自己观点的女性”。在7月份明尼苏达公共广播电台的辩论中，她强烈批评了人工智能（AI）的潜在危害，称如果AI失控，将对人类社会构成“生存威胁”。
Flanagan won the Democratic-Farmer-Labor primary for the U.S. Senate last month. Her Ojibwe name, Gizhiiwewidamookwe, means Speaks in a Loud and Clear Voice Woman. She has spoken forcefully on data centers, calling AI an “existential threat to us if it gets out of control,” in a July Minnesota Public Radio News debate.
这一现象具有代表性：在初选中，Flanagan曾发布广告攻击现任众议员Angie Craig与加密货币行业的关联，称：“Angie Craig投票支持特朗普通过出售加密货币获利数十亿美元；而我绝不会这么做。”分析人士认为，AI和数据中心的问题其实延续了Flanagan一贯的反企业、反金钱垄断的立场。她将AI视为一种“生存威胁”，并将其与失业、安全问题以及系统失控的风险联系在一起。
This fits a pattern. In her primary against Rep. Angie Craig, Flanagan ran ads attacking Craig’s ties to the crypto industry: “Angie Craig voted to let Trump make billions selling crypto coins. I won’t.” Analysts see AI and data centers as a natural extension of that same anti-corporate-money lane heading into November. Her “existential threat” framing is about AI broadly, tied to job loss, safety, and runaway systems.
戴维斯曾是一名综合格斗（MMA）选手，受过法律专业训练；她深知如何出拳，也懂得如何建立诉讼案。但在数据中心问题上，她从未在公开场合采取过这两种行动。然而，她在7月份的一份KSHB选民指南中采取了一种更为低调和务实的态度，她表示：“如果任何数据中心会增加家庭电费、浪费我们有限的水资源，或是将负担转嫁给堪萨斯州的社区，那么它就不应该推进。”戴维斯说：“数据中心决策主要是在州和地方层面做出的。”这也是一个颇为巧妙的立场：她任职于交通、小企业和农业委员会，这些委员会无论如何都不会将数据中心划入她的管辖范围。今年2月，戴维斯会见了全国部落历史保护官协会，该协会随后在7月正式投票反对撤销《第106条》，并警告称此举将削弱部落协商并扩大机构的单方面权力。但出席会议并不如发表公开声明那样具有分量。
Davids is a former MMA fighter and lawyer by training; she knows how to throw a punch and how to build a case. On data centers, she’s done neither publicly. But she took a quieter and pragmatic approach in a July KSHB voter guide, stating that “no data center should move forward if it raises electricity costs for families, wastes our limited water resources, or shifts the burden onto Kansas communities.” “Data center decisions are primarily made at the state and local level,” Davids said. It’s also a convenient position: she sits on Transportation, Small Business, and Agriculture committees, not those that would put data centers in her lane anyway. In February, Davids met with the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, which proceeded to formally vote against the Section 106 rollback in July, warning it would weaken tribal consultation and expand unilateral agency power. But showing up for a meeting doesn’t carry the same weight as making a public statement.
哈兰德的竞选团队提出利用太阳能、风能和地热能发电来抵消数据中心的能耗，同时要求高能耗行业建设自己的能源基础设施。但在该州最大的数据中心项目——“木星计划”（Project Jupiter）上，她的表态却相对较少。上周在洛斯卢纳斯被一名选民追问时，她说：“我没有权力阻止木星计划。”随后，在上一周，她的立场似乎发生了转变。哈兰德的竞选团队现在表示，她支持暂停新建数据中心项目，“直到我们建立起强大、可靠的防护栏”。在此之前，新墨西哥州聚光灯（Searchlight New Mexico）报道称，来自负责建设木星计划的甲骨文（Oracle）和克莱科（Clayco）公司高管向她提供了87,200美元的竞选捐款。圣达菲县和索科罗县已经通过了暂停数据中心建设的决议。四名民主党州议员几个月前就已经提出过类似的提案。哈兰德提出的版本范围更窄、时间更晚，而且在措辞上也经过了远为谨慎的对冲。
Haaland’s campaign has proposed sun, wind, and geothermal energy generation to offset data center energy consumption alongside requiring high-energy-demand industries to build their own energy infrastructure. But on the state’s biggest data center project, Project Jupiter, she’s said comparatively little. Pressed by a voter in Los Lunas last week, she said: “I don’t have the power to stop Project Jupiter.” Then, last week, her position seemed to have shifted. Haaland’s campaign now says she supports a moratorium on new data center development “until we have strong, reliable guardrails.” This follows Searchlight New Mexico’s report of $87,200 in campaign donations from executives at Oracle and Clayco, the firm actually building Project Jupiter. Santa Fe and Socorro Counties have already passed data center moratoriums. Four Democratic state legislators already proposed one months ago. Haaland’s is a narrower, later, and far more carefully hedged version of the same idea.
但对问责制的要求并未就此停止。周末，新墨西哥州发起了一份关于气候正义的请愿书，呼吁哈兰德退还87,200美元，并承诺不再建设任何人工智能数据中心（包括“Project Jupiter”项目）。哈兰德迅速回应称，她尚未与团队讨论过退款事宜，但她表示不会被这些筹款活动的影响所左右。实际上，“Project Jupiter”项目的进展并不容小觑：根据Oracle Cloud Infrastructure公司副总裁的说法，该项目目前已完成26%的建设工作（而7月份时仅完成了9%）；尽管该项目已获得的两项许可已被新墨西哥州最高法院暂停执行。
But the demand for accountability didn’t end there. Over the weekend, a New Mexico climate justice petition started circulating, calling on Haaland to return the $87,200 and commit to no AI data centers, with no carveout for Project Jupiter. Haaland responded fast that she hasn’t discussed returning the money with her team, but “cannot be bowled over” by campaign donations. Realistically, the carveout isn’t nothing: the project is 26% complete according to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s own vice president, up from 9% in July, despite the fact that two of its permits have been paused by the New Mexico Supreme Court.
佩尔托拉采取了不同的立场。在费尔班克斯举行的劳动节活动中，当被问及数据中心建设问题时，她表示她会“听从当地居民的意见”，并在确保不会给现有用户带来额外负担的前提下推进相关计划。这一立场与她的对手——共和党参议员丹·沙利文形成了鲜明对比：沙利文极力主张在阿拉斯加的军事设施内建设数据中心；此外，Stak Energy公司提出的耗资5亿美元的数据中心项目也已在北坡地区引发了广泛关注。
Peltola takes a different tack. Asked about data centers at a Fairbanks Labor Day event, she said she takes her “cue from the people of that region,” deferring to local support provided it doesn’t strain the grid for existing ratepayers. It’s a notably different posture from her opponent, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, who has pushed to bring data centers onto Alaska’s military installations, and from a $500 million Stak Energy data center proposal already drawing scrutiny in the North Slope.
然而，在阿拉斯加，情况相当复杂。正如我之前报道的那样，该州约4400万英亩（占全州土地面积的12%）的土地由阿拉斯加原住民企业控制。这些企业是根据1971年联邦法律成立的营利性组织，其董事会只需履行受托责任，而非回应股东的诉求。这种制度使得像Bering Straits Native Corporation这样的企业能够竞标联邦合同（包括移民与海关执法局的相关合同），尽管股东们强烈反对，但董事会也无义务回应这些反对意见。换句话说，佩尔托拉在采访中提到的“当地支持”可能并不会转化为实际的投票支持。
But “the people of that region” is complicated in Alaska. As I’ve reported, a lot of the state’s land—roughly 44 million acres, or 12% of all land in the state—is controlled by Alaska Native corporations, for-profit entities created by a 1971 federal law, whose boards answer to fiduciary duty, not shareholder votes. That structure has already let corporations like the Bering Straits Native Corporation go after federal contracts, ICE included, despite loud shareholder objections boards aren’t obligated to address. In other words, the “local support” Peltola invokes in her interview may not translate into actual votes.
这场辩论也恰逢对《106条款》的拟议修改。该条款是1966年《国家历史保护法》中的一项规定，要求联邦机构评估开发项目对历史遗址的影响，酝酿已有几十年之久。如果这些修改得以实施，根据现行法律原住民部落享有协商权的联邦土地，理论上可能会变成人工智能数据中心开发商无需通过联邦审查程序即可占用的区域。
This debate also coincides with proposed changes to Section 106, a clause in the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 that requires federal agencies to assess how development affects historic sites, which are decades in the making. If these changes are enacted, federal land, where Native Nations hold consultation rights under extant law, could theoretically become terrain AI data center developers could claim without a federal review process.
包括原住民部落在内的700多个组织已经签署了一封反对修改《106条款》的信函——但这并非该条款第一次成为攻击目标。
More than 700 organizations, including Native Nations, have already signed a letter opposing this change to Section 106—but this isn’t the first time it has been targeted.
在唐纳德·特朗普第一任期接近尾声时，内政部长发布了第3389号部长令，免除了重大能源和土地管理项目接受标准的《106条款》审查。这一举动很快被拜登政府注意到并迅速推翻。
Near the end of President Donald Trump’s first term, the Secretary of the Interior issued Secretarial Order 3389, exempting major energy and land-management projects from standard Section 106 review. It was a move the Biden administration noticed early on and swiftly reversed.
当前由历史保护咨询委员会主导的修订工作承接了该行政命令未竟的部分，这也是能源、输电和采矿业长期策略的一部分，旨在削弱《106条款》作为基础设施建设延误因素的作用——这一策略在人工智能热潮爆发前数年就已经存在。
The current Advisory Council on Historic Preservation rewrite picks up where that order left off, and is part of energy, transmission, and mining’s long game to weaken Section 106 as a source of delay for infrastructure—one that predates the AI boom by years.
石油和输电公司自特朗普第一任期以来一直在为此苦苦抗争，而数据中心开发商不过是最新、资金最雄厚的入局者。
Data center developers are merely the newest, best-capitalized arrivals to a fight that oil and transmission companies have been taking punches at since Trump’s first term.
原住民候选人在对待数据中心的态度上或许有所不同，但在这一点上他们应该保持团结：当又一个强大的行业为争夺土地而来时，原住民部落绝不能失去他们的话语权。
Native candidates may differ in their approach to data centers, but they should be united on this: Native Nations must not lose their voice just as another powerful industry comes for their land.